We are tired and confused, fumbling in the back of a car.
We are lost but we are not broken, and we work fingers through each other’s hair while the sun is dipping in the distance and my hands are dipping below his waist.
We are young and stupid and fumbling not just in the back of the car but in life itself and we may be young and stupid but we are not alone, and that has made all the difference.

Because when the nights turn dark and lonely, our minds call out to each other and our words cross the distances of streets and sidewalks and oceans and I can feel my heart close to yours.
And in the back of my mind and the front of my heart I can feel your sorrow and your fears and your joy, because they are mine, too, and I know that we will prevail.
Because despite the sorrow and fear and joy, we have one common heart, and when we follow that heart like Dr. Seuss has taught us, we will arrive at all the places we’ll go and all the thoughts we’ll think and all the people we’ll love, and that has made all the difference.

In the end, it is more than a car, or an empty space, or a test or an application or a date on a calendar – it is a fragment of that heart, not broken off, but found so that we can form what was never whole to begin with.
Because it’s not a series of tragedies that tears us apart, but a story of inspiration and joy and hope, and we are not being ripped open but sewn together, and you are a fragment of my heart like I am a fragment of yours, and I never knew that the empty space was there, but now the void is gone, and that has made all the difference.

I’m stealing another poet’s words, but maybe that’s okay – maybe he too is a fragment of my heart, and maybe his words will help to fill another piece of it, maybe I will have to get out my needle and thread and sew his words into my chest like I stitched you in.
These aren’t stitches to heal wounds or repair damage, but lines of thread to put together the pieces of the dress I will wear to my funeral, and a part of you will be there, even if your body is not, because I will carry you in my heart like I carry myself.
We are young and stupid, works-in-progress with editing left to do, but it’s the kind of editing that uses the space bar, not the delete key, and I could not delete you from my heart even if I tried, and that has made all the difference.

One day I will find the last piece, and he will be a dream and a nightmare together, but he will fit perfectly into the only spot left – the Missing Piece to my Big O – and when his elbow brushes your knee in my heart, I will know I am complete.
Then I will sew him into the hem in my dress, and I will stow it away until its time comes, but it will be the most beautiful dress that I will ever own or wear, and the day I put it on won’t be my last, but my first.
And that will make all the difference.